Understanding social value

GOV.UK's Social Value Act information includes examples of services commissioned by public bodies that added social value for local communities.

The Social Value Hub offers a wide range of free guides, case studies and videos about social value in the UK.

Increase and measure your social impact

The Social Value Portal allows businesses, communities, public services and voluntary organisations to share information and increase social value. Organisations can find out what their local communities need, incorporate social value into their contract bids and measure their social value.

Inspiring Impact has resources to help you plan, evidence and learn from the impact of your work, including a self-assessment tool: Measuring Up!

Measuring social impact - This guide from the Foundation of Social Return on Investment uses case studies to help you measure your impact.

Sport England evaluation framework - This resource aims to help Sport England colleagues and partners to evaluate funding streams and projects effectively, and get maximum value from measurement and evaluation.

How to measure your wellbeing impact - Defining and measuring wellbeing can be tricky. So this guide should give you the confidence and the tools you need to give it a try – and be successful.”

Case studies

GOV.UK have published a series of case studies showing how providers apply social value.

What is social value?

It's the collective benefit that a service can provide to a community, including social, economic and environmental benefits.

“Social value seeks to maximise the additional benefit that can be created by procuring or commissioning services, above and beyond the benefit of merely the services themselves’’ – The Public Services (Social Value) Act.

This Act encourages public sector bodies to commission local services that offer social value.

See our Social Value Report. This is the result of work led by Connect Hertfordshire to explore how the County's voluntary sector, in partnership with Herts CC, could contribute to and agree a Hertfordshire approach to securing social value through commissioning and to how resources are deployed in the County.